The Enemy

[We are fighting] against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.   Ephesians 6:12

When you became a Christian, four things happened. First, you were brought into a new relationship with God in which your sins were forgiven and your condemnation removed. Second, you became a new creation. Third, you became part of God’s family, the church. And fourth, you provoked the attention of an enemy whose purpose is to oppose and destroy the work of God.

We met this enemy at the beginning of the Bible’s story, when he came to Eve in the form of a serpent. Having rebelled against the authority of God himself, his great objective is to destroy God’s handiwork. That is why when God began a new work in your life, you took on new significance for the devil.

Satan used to be your master: “You were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, . . . obeying the devil. . . . He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God” (Ephesians 2:1-2). He held you unresponsive to God and moving along with the flow of this world. But when God made you alive with Christ, your old master became your new enemy.

Having lost you, Satan’s objective is damage control. He is determined that you should not pose any further threat to his kingdom. That means he’ll do everything in his power to make you ineffective and unproductive in the Christian life. Becoming a Christian is not the end of your battles; it’s the beginning of new warfare.

This means your primary problem is not with people—“we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies” (Ephesians 6:12). Obviously, people do cause problems in our lives, so we tend to assume that if we can get free from them, our struggles will be over. But that is never the case.

When we fall into the error of identifying people as the problem, it’s wise to remind ourselves that they’re not the enemy; they’re victims of the enemy. The real enemy has taken many hostages—blinding their eyes and keeping them bound. Our objective is not to fight the hostages, but to rescue them.

For further reading, see Ephesians 2